[SWLUG] ntl Broadband and Mandrake 9.1

[Tim Shapcott]

On Saturday 13 March 2004 11:44 pm, 'o-Dzin Tridral wrote:

> Could anyone tell me what the next step is, once the cable modem is
> plugged into the ethernet port?  Apparently we have to get a temporary
> IP address, and then register for a permanent one.  I'm told that the
> installing engineer will not know what to do.

All the Windoze installation software does is look at your hardware to decide 
whether it thinks it is capable of broadband, install the USB drivers for the 
cable modem (which you don't need anyway if you are using ethernet) and point 
IE at https://autoreg.autoregister.net/start.html . All you need to do is 
plug in the cable modem into your ethernet port, run your dhcp client and 
point your favourite browser at the address above.

> Does anyone have a recommendations re firewalls etc?

I have been using Smoothwall GPL (now Smoothwall Express - http://
www.smoothwall.org) with NTL cable for two years now, as have a number of 
friends of mine, with no problems at all. If you have a spare box lying 
around anywhere (a P100 with 16MB RAM will be sufficient!) with two NICs then 
you're ready to go. Smoothwall gives you a DHCP server for your internal 
network, a Squid proxy, IDS, etc. etc. Well worth looking at.

Also, if you aren't sure about running a DHCP client on your MDK box to 
register the modem, don't worry... You can do it through the Smoothwall. It 
automatically runs a DHCP client when it boots, and you can just register via 
it on your MDK box.

Good luck!

Tim